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You only meant to get her to loosen up. De-stress.
She can barely walk now, leaning so heavily against you that you're almost dragging her along. She's laughing slow and low at something she tried to say but deteriorated into mumbles half-way through, the sound more like a gasping wheeze you'd expect on someone's deathbed.
The first sip had had her face scrunch up as if she'd eaten a whole lemon. She asked if it had gone sour and you laughed at her. It had been in good nature, but in hindsight, it was probably the pressure that got her to pick the glass back up. Half the drink was gone in a couple determined gulps, her face stubbornly cold and blank aside from the slight flare of her nostrils that she couldn't quite suppress. It took another glass before the cold expression melted away to annoyance at the poor singing of whoever was up on the karaoke stage. You asked if she thought she could do better, which she denied, but immediately started gushing about the beautiful voice of someone she knew.
Someone that, as the night and words wore on, you were becoming increasingly convinced that you also knew, and you hated where it was going. You know how this goes, and you're not looking forward to how it ends.
She ended up having a good time somewhere between the 3rd and 4th glass. You almost convinced her to get up on stage, but you two spent the evening at the table comparing cultures and laughing at the wild differences and odd similarities. Ever the diplomat, you made sure to steer clear of the harsher details. It was supposed to be a good time, and you weren't ready for an angry or sad drunk.
Her resistence to ailments did her well, but not well enough. By glass #8, she was so gone that the bartender had both cut her off and would most likely have kept you from escorting her back to the hotel had you not flashed your status. You tried not to grimace when the simple title drop was enough for all staff to disregard her safety.
Luckily, she's in good hands. You're one elevator ride and a key away from dropping her in her room and heading straight for your own.
Or you would have been, if she didn't get sick immediately after the elevator. Thank goodness there was a bin right outside.
The good mood spoiled, you resign yourself to sleeping in a chair beside the bed to make sure she doesn't choke during the night. Or something else.
She asks you to stay before you can even sit down. It's a pitiful voice on the brink of tears; something so much more honest than you'd been bargaining for.
So you find yourself sharing a bed, fully clothed and on top of the duvet, with a girl sobbing into your shoulder.
She cries that she feels like a child still; that she can't suit anyone no matter how; that she's unable to do anything for anyone; that she should know better (she shouldn't—fuck, you've read her file, you know she's basically an overgrown child deep down, why did you think this was a good idea?). Her attitude when gulping down glass after glass makes more sense when she laments how immature she is. When the guilt brings you to wrap your arms around her, she clings to you like you're going to disappear.
She cries that 'he' never stayed after the first night she asked. You don't ask for clarification, but with what you know of her and what you probably know of who you think 'he' is, it was probably closer to your current interaction than anything else. She continues crying, admitting her fear that the next time he closes the door behind him would be the last time the door had ever been open.
You know exactly who 'he' is when she cries about their last interaction; how abandoned she feels, whether he meant well or not. You want to snap that he's scum, but you're in a glass house yourself; she's hardly the first whose heart won't let go of an awful person. She continues crying, laying bare all of her insecurities and how much she only ever wanted to help 'him' and how she's terrified for 'him'.
She cries about how much she loves him, and you swell with rage for the asshole who can't not know what he's doing to her, and allow your heart to break for her. She's always loved him, and no matter how much she learns about him (and you know she knows more about him than even you do), she can't bring herself to stop. She admits her disgust at his actions, and her wishes that she could stay disgusted instead of make excuses for him and focus on how sad and weak he's been when it came down to it.
It's more than she's ever told him, you know; though you wonder how the bastard would react if she outright told him all the flowery, poetic drivel that's spewing out of her as she winds down from her breakdown into general lovesickness. Your knee jerk assumption is that he'd turn away without a thought, but with all she's told you tonight, you think he might just break in a way.
Her last mumbles are a mixture of gratitude and remorse; thanking you for being there, and apologizing for something you couldn't quite catch but was probably as pointless and nebulous as 'everything'. She's harmless at the end of the day, after all. Just a harmless little girl caught up in this mess, trying her best to keep herself together just like everyone else.
You hold her through the night, some vestige of brotherly instinct flaring up to eat away at plans A through D that you had tucked away for the upcoming shitstorm next week.
When she wakes the next morning, she's only worried that she said too much, or troubled you. She begs you, 'I don't know what I—don't tell him. If I said what I think I said, don't tell him. This is going to be hard enough without it.'
You know what she thinks she said—it's half the basis for your hatred for that fucker—but she didn't. So you play it off like the fool you've always presented yourself as; giving a ridiculous decoy that has her recoiling from your embrace before she can pretend to agree with the outlandish claim to desperately keep the lie alive. Even if she's firmly cemented as a victim in your eyes, you feel a curl of disgust at the realization that she never even mentioned it at all that night. It's almost cancelled out by how slimey you feel from being complicit in the lie once more. Almost. It's quickly becoming your business and it makes you want to claw your stupid bleeding heart out.
You leave the room after some mushy stock sentiments that you almost fooled yourself into believing. You leave the grounds and find something to take it out on before the guilt makes you sick as well.